Only one drive used in a multi drive library

[jimbliss]

I have an MSL8096 with 2 FC LTO 4 drives. Everything seems to be working fine, except the backup to tape jobs (15) only use one drive. Shouldn’t it use both as they are separate jobs?

If I run a tape erase job it will use the unused drive while a backup to tape job is running.

Thanks,
Jim

[tsightler]

In the current implementation you can only use both drives if you use two different media pools and assign each job to a media pool.

[nunciate]

Are you really telling me I can't use 1 media pool for all my daily incremental backups and 1 for my weekly full backups? If I have to split my jobs up among multiple pools so I can target the 4 tape drives I have I will potentially use way more tape than I would if I just had a single pool that could use all available drives. I have to say I am extremely disappointed with how tape out was implemented. You all needed a lot more time to get this done right. It is almost unusable at this point with all the work arounds and Macgyvering I have to do just to get things to tape. Not to mention that every time I run a backup it uses the full tape backup pool to perform my incremental backups. Even though I have specified to use a different pool. I am quite frustrated at this point. This implementation was a big fail and a black eye for an otherwise excellent product.

[tsightler]

I would suggest opening a support case regarding the issue with your jobs not properly using full and incremental tape pools as I have not seen this specific issue during any of the vendor tape testing that I have done or in the lab setup that I have so I'm not sure what could be causing that.

Regarding your feelings on the current tape support, I think it's only fair to point out that tape support is actually very complex, and most companies that have been doing tape support have done so for more than a decade so they have spent many years developing their solutions around media management and pooling. On the other hand this our our version 1.0 for this capability, and much of the feedback to this point has been excellent. Certainly there are many areas of improvement that are needed, but I think that's fully expected with the release of such a feature. I can assure you that future versions will continue to address the issues like this that customers report to us, and your feedback is appreciated.

[sonicasuk]

Hi guys,

just a quick question, i have moved over to use the veeam backup to tape and it works perfectly. the only issue that i have is with the old backup software we were able to utilise both tape drives in our backup uint, Hp msl4048.

i have opened a case with veeam but thought it would also be an idea to post the question here as well.
support ticket #00445490

i hope it is possible ??
kind regards

Sonic

[veremin]

As mentioned above, with the current implementation you have to use different media pools in order to utilize several drives simultaneously. Thanks.

[sonicasuk]

do you have an eta as to when this will be possible, at the moment the backups are taking longer than normal ( with 2 drives).

i understand that other software providers have a head start when it comes to tape backups, but i would like to use veeam for our data to tapes but this may not be possible seeing that the backup time bascically doubles because we dont have access to the 2nd drive.

is it possible to give me some advice with regards to configuring the media pools so that i can utilize both drives.

basically we have a reasonably large backup (400-500 vms) first they are written to disk and then these are copied to tape.

i have 1 media pool for the tapes that i use for the data to disk.

any help would be appreicated. i think this is going to be a pain to arrange.

many thanks
regards
sonic

[veremin]

I assume you have more than one backup job in your environment, right? If so, you will have to create two different media pools (one per drive), as well as, two different “backup to tape” jobs and split existing backup jobs between them. Thanks.

[sonicasuk]

Thanks for your quick response,

Ill have a play with the configuration and see what i can arrange,

many thanks for your help.

regards

sonic

[veremin]

You’re welcome. Should any additional help be needed, don’t hesitate to let us know. Thanks.

[Yoann Castillo]

Hi all,

Veeam can handle multiple drives simultaneously ?


Thks !


Sig'

[veremin]

Yes, but you have to use different media pools – one per drive. Thanks.

[raymond.mui]

We are using an HP MSL 2420 Tape Library, with a single tape drive. Technically, adding one more tape drive to the library reduces the backup time.

May I ask if Veeam backup to tape function is able to utilize both tape drives at the same time? Or in what way?

Thanks.

Raymond

[veremin]

Yep, it can. But for now you will have to create to different media pool and assign them to different drives; this way, VB&R will be able to utilize two drives simultaneously.

Thanks.

[raymond.mui]

So, different drives can only be used by different jobs simultaneously, right?

[foggy]

Correct.

[joob77]

Hi,

Is the above still valid? I use Veeam 8 along with hp msl4048 tape unit. And is see that my backup job is using only one drive. I expected it'll use both the drives...

Thank you for answering!

Greetz,
Joost Brenters
CNV

[foggy]

Yes, you need to use different media pools for different drives.

[joob77]

ok, thanks for answering. I'll go with that then.

Grtz,
Joost

[rklingaman]

Just thought I would post here to see this behavior changed. Upgraded to the latest version 8 and trying to move away from my old tape software and while I can manage separating the media pools I really shouldn't have to and hope that this will be changed soon.

[Dima P.]

Ryan,
We are doing our best provide such functionality in the upcoming releases.

[tym]

can two drives be used simultaniously with one media pool, when the first does a backup, and the 2nd does a restore?

[Dima P.]

Tim,

can two drives be used simultaneously with one media pool, when the first does a backup, and the 2nd does a restore?

It is possible in case the files you want to restore donot reside the tape taken for backup job and there is at least one free drive

[winnt]

Is this still the case? Do we still have to separate our backup jobs to use separate media pools in order to use multiple tape drives? Thanks.

[veremin]

Yep. However, according to the plan, version 9 should improve current situation. Thanks.

[DeBoom]

I'm not sure if this is still up to date, but I also have a question.

While backing up on one drive, I want to use the second drive to also back up data, the second backup job is in another media pool. However, while the backup is working on the first drive, I can not access the second drive.

Does someone know what the problem is. We're using version 9.3x.

Thanks for the help

[veremin]

We're using version 9.3x.

There is no such product version. Are you probably talking about 9.5 Update 3?

However, while the backup is working on the first drive, I can not access the second drive.

Can you tell us how those pools are configured?

[nathano]

Has this been changed yet? Using 9.5 U3 and still looks like 2 tape jobs using the same media pool will not use multiple drives. looks like the second job is going to wait for the first job to finish. looks like you still need to use a different media pool.

fingers crossed for update 4

[Dima P.]

Hello Nathan,

Using 9.5 U3 and still looks like 2 tape jobs using the same media pool will not use multiple drives

Can you please elaborate? Parallel processing for tape drives was introduced long ago (moreover you can span multiple backup chains across multiple tape drives within one tape job). Thanks.

[veremin]

How many concurrent tasks have you specified in media pool settings? Aren't you probably talking about GFS media pool, by any chance? Thanks.